What’s so interesting about Pinterest anyways?

I was curious as well. So when it first launched, I tried it out, just to see for myself.
At first I thought, this just another stupid social bookmarking site for pictures. I already had a delicious account, which I barely even use, so I didn’t give it another thought, and just let it be. I figured it would go away, just like Google Buzz or Instagram would eventually, one day…

Of course we know now that is not always the case with social media sites. And almost a year later, however…it was, still there, … In fact it was everywhere.

Everyone was talking about it, and everyone was on it, or trying to do and get you to- Just DO IT, too!

In marketing and sales, this is what we call the “Jones effect” – as in keeping up with the Jones’(the family across the street)or Jonesing (Verb), describing a state in which one experiences a strong desire or craving, like coffee or a cigarette,– its addictive, its contagious, and its… dangerous. but because everyone is doing it, then it must be good, and that is the reason why, you should be doing it too!

Still, it was just a bunch of marketing hype. With no mention of any actual ROI that could be directly tied to using pinterest.. and the mere fact that people spend so much more time on Pinterest , than any other social site means that people are wasting even more time on the internet and less time in reality, and no real work is getting done anymore. However, when one of my non-profit clients asked me about pinterest the other day, and how she has heard that it is good for non-profits and forwarded me this article, from a very respected source in the industry, I began to think that maybe there was something here that I missing.
So I read it and then kept on reading Nine Pinterest Best Practices for Nonprofits and then saw what they had pinned on pinterest. Still confused but felt compelled to find the answer. I felt it was my duty, as is part of my job actually. I was more I was determined to get to the bottom of this. So I tried again to the answer to the question…

“what’s so interesting about pinterest anyways’?

So and I logged back into my old pinterest account. It was easy, now that it was connected with facebook, just like everything else is these days, and then I found my” friends” and connected with them and followed their boards,. You know, the same things one does with every other social media site. Click, click, no- skip the invitations, click again, connect my twitter, upload profile pic, and fill in about me section. With that done, I started to create my boards and uploaded a few pics just like I had done in delicious. It was easy to get started, and the bookmarklet makes it even easier.

Then I started to look around and what my friends (those people that I actually knew in real life) had pinned and to see how they are using pinterest.
What I found was very interesting! –
– I saw Matt Gaskill, a real estate broker I know, with pins of luxurious homes.
– Tara Peterson, a graphic designer and former colleague, had pins of inspiring images that related to her creative work.
These people I worked, and really only knew on professional level, yet their boards made sense for the kind of work that they did.
When I saw the boards of my good friend Jaime who I have not seen in years, since he moved back to the Phillipens, but have always stayed in touch with via social media. I looked as his mere 33 pins and the images that I saw gave me the feeling of being right there next to him. I felt even more connected to him, even though I have known him forever, and just had a Google+ hangout chat the other day, there was definitely something there, more than meets the eyes, that much I knew.

The big picture didn’t come until after I saw all the pictures (over 400) that my 17 year cousin had pinned within 12 boards. Just like any other teen these days, she has 600+Facebook friends, and lives on social media. When I saw those boards, it made me see her in a new light. With boards entitled “things I love” , “Dance”, “favorite places and spaces”, “motivation”, and “products that I love”, I was starting to get the picture of why people pin these images on pinterest.To visually express themselves and their interests through the use of images. Read my next post on what’s makes pinterest so addicting and how to use pinterest for your business.